1. There are too many barriers for integration to be successful.
Paul Nadasdy, Department of Anthropology, The Johns Hopkins University, 1999
(“THE POLITICS OF TEK: POWER AND THE 'INTEGRATION' OF KNOWLEDGE”, Arctic Anthropology; 1999, Vol. 36 Issue 1/2, p1, 18p) [Ha]
There are two conventional ways of explaining why it has been so difficult in practice to integrate traditional knowledge and science. One type of explanation is encountered primarily in official and formal settings; the other can be heard only in more informal and unofficial contexts. At conferences, workshops, and other formal arenas for the discussion of traditional knowledge and co-management, as well as in the vast majority of the academic and policy-oriented literature on the topic, participants and authors are likely to identify and focus on certain obstacles to the integration of traditional knowledge and science. These, they argue, arise from the fact the two types of knowledge are incommensurable. In contrast to traditional knowledge, which is assumed to be qualitative, intuitive, holistic, and oral, science is seen as quantitative, analytical, reductionist, and literate. Indeed, one cannot examine the question of traditional knowledge for long without being confronted by a barrage of such dualistic comparisons (often arranged neatly in a table) purporting to sum up the differences between traditional and scientific knowledge. The assumption is that since traditional knowledge is expressed in a form that is vastly different from, and largely incompatible with, that of science, there are a whole host of essentially technical problems that accompany the effort to integrate them. Most of these problems relate to difficulties in accessing and collecting TEK or with translating it into a form that can be utilized by resource managers. This approach views the present lack of progress towards integration as resulting from the complexity of these problems and the difficulty in developing strategies and methodologies capable of effectively dealing with them.

2. Status quo solves—over 80 percent of doctors are traditional.
Erick V. A. Gbodossou, President of PROMETRA (Association For the Promotion of Traditional Medicine) International, Virginia Davis Floyd, Visiting Scholar in Traditional Knowledge Systems at Spelman College and Executive Director of PROMETRA, and Charles Ibnou Katy, coordinator of research and patient services at the Center for Experimental Traditional Medicine, ‘03 ("The Role of Traditional Medicine in Africa’s Fight Against HIV/AIDS," PROMETRA International, www.prometra.org/Documents /AIDSinAfrica-ScenariofortheFut ure.pdf)
Traditional healers are the major health manpower resource for Africa. Often traditional healers are the only source of health services for major population groups throughout Africa. In many cases, they are the preferred source of health care. It is estimated that between 80 – 85% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa receives its health education and health care from practitioners of traditional medicine. 1,2,3 Traditional practitioners far outnumber modern health care practitioners, are culturally accepted and respected, and more universally located. WHO/AFRO statistics shown inthis table 4 reveal ratios of practitioners to population that highlight this manpower distribution fact.

3. They’re incompatible-- Traditional healers reject modern doctors
James Hall, Inter-Press Service writer, 2
(Inter-Press Service, Jan 24, lexis)
Overworked clinic doctors cannot provide the patient attention offered by traditional healers, whose lack of formal medical training causes tension between them and modern doctors, nurses and medical organizations. Dismissed by the modern medical establishment as dabblers in superstition and ineffective medicine, the healers tend to be defensive when speaking of their work to outsiders. "Whenever something goes wrong with one of our patients, you hear about it from the doctors," a Swazi healer named Inyoni told a reporter. "But when we save a person or cure an ailment, you never hear about that."

4. Traditional medicine undermines ARV’s—ubhejane proves
UN Region Information Networks, 6
(Small Clinic At Centre of Debate Over Traditional Medicine, lexis)
Over the past few months, hundreds of people have been streaming into an office building in Pinetown, on the outskirts of South Africa's east coast city of Durban, looking for the clinic that sells ubhejane - a herbal mixture they believe can treat HIV/AIDS. The controversial traditional medicine has received vast media coverage, mainly due to the backing it has received from influential political figures such as the country's health minister, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, and provincial health officials in KwaZulu-Natal. Tshabalala-Msimang and KwaZulu Natal's health minister Peggy Nkonyeni reportedly recommended to the mother of the deputy president, who runs a hospice in Durban, that she should give ubhejane to her patients. The city's mayor, Obed Mlaba, is also supporting the herbal remedy, and is sponsoring its supply to patients at a hospice in Inchanga, a rural village about 40 km from Durban. But ubhejane, a dark brown liquid sold in old plastic milk bottles, has yet to undergo clinical trials to test its efficacy. All that has so far been confirmed, according to tests by the University of KwaZulu Natal's (UKZN) medical school, is that it is not toxic. Despite the negative publicity in the national media, on the ground in KwaZulu-Natal there seems to be far greater willingness to accept the traditional medicine as an effective remedy. As a result, AIDS activists warn that the government's apparent support for ubhejane could undermine the roll-out of antiretrovirals (ARVs) - the orthodox treatment that can prolong the lives of HIV-positive people. The cost of ubhejane does not seem to have dented its appeal. Government-supplied ARVs have been free since 2003, but a full course of the herbal remedy retails at R374 (US$62.8), in a country where an average low-income salary is around $250. Just 100,000 South Africans are receiving ARV therapy out of the estimated 500,000 believed to be in need of treatment.

5. Patents
A. Traditional medicine is co-opted—drug companies patent medicines
Xiaorui Zhang, Acting Coordinator, Traditional Medicine World Health Organization, 2k
(UNCTAD Expert Meeting on "Systems and National Experiences for Protecting Traditional Knowledge, Innovations and Practices,” http://r0.unctad.org/trade_env/docs/who.pdf)
The new issues are concerned on how benefits are derived from the use of biodiversity and how associated traditional medicine are shared, and how to protect the intellectual property rights between holders of traditional knowledge and researchers during the process of transfer of this kind of traditional knowledge to the modern technologies. The challenge is that the vast majority of plant genetic resources and other forms of biodiversity are found in – or originate from – developing countries. In most situations, knowledge of traditional medicine is at times appropriated, adapted and patented by scientists and industry, for the most part from developed countries, with little or no compensation to the custodians of this knowledge and without their prior informed consent. The protection of traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and traditional medicine and equitable sharing of benefits have been receiving increasing attention on the international agenda in recent years.

B. This causes colonialism and destruction of indigenous cultures
Jonathan B. Warner, Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington, 6
(“Using Global Themes to Reframe the Bioprospecting Debate”, Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 13.2, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/indiana_journal_of_global_legal_studies/v013/13.2warner.html)
Neocolonialism is intricately linked to bioprospecting. 35 Typically, corporations from developed nations, usually from the northern hemisphere, under Western ideas of property ownership36 and intellectual property laws, 37 appropriate biodiversity from developing nations. 38 These corporations act under the [End Page 645] assumption that it is their natural right to take these resources. 39 As one commentator notes: The freedom that transnational corporations are claiming through intellectual property rights protection in the GATT agreement on Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights . .. is the freedom that European colonizers have claimed since 1492. Columbus set a precedent when he treated the license to conquer non-European peoples as a natural right of European men. The land titles issued by the pope through European kings and queens were the first patents. . .. Eurocentric notions of property and piracy are the bases on which the [intellectual property] laws of the GATT and World Trade Organization . .. have been framed. When Europeans first colonized the non-European world, they felt it was their duty to "discover and conquer," to "subdue, occupy, and possess[]" . .. everything, every society, every culture. The colonies have now been extended to the interior spaces, the "genetic codes" of life-forms from microbes and plants to animals, including humans. . .. The assumption of empty lands . .. is now being expanded to "empty life," seeds and medicinal plants. . .. The same logic is now used to appropriate biodiversity from the original owners and innovators by defining their seeds, medicinal plants, and medical knowledge as nature, as nonscience, and treating the tools of genetic engineering as the yardstick of "improvement." . .. At the heart of the GATT treaty and its patent laws is the treatment of biopiracy as a natural right of Western corporations, necessary for the "development" of Third World communities. 40 This neocolonialism takes advantage of and abuses aboriginal cultures by stripping them of their ability to participate fully in markets available for their knowledge and skills. 41 For example, W.R. Grace's neem-based patents give it control over all such products in, at least, the U. S. market, potentially denying [End Page 645] indigenous Indian companies what could otherwise be their largest and most lucrative market. 42 Thus, the indigenous peoples and companies could be prevented from applying their knowledge and skills to the capitalist systems dominating the world economy. 43 Further, because of their established economic dominance, the northern nations are able to impose their ideologies into international agreements relatively easily. 44 This neocolonialism perpetuates the North-South divide, as typically none of the profits made by the multinational companies return to the states or peoples of origination. 45

6. Local systems are the best avenue for traditional healers.
Steven Feierman, Professor of African History @ UPenn, 1985
(“Struggles for Control: The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modern Africa”, African Studies Review, Vol. 28, No. 2/3) [Ha]
At this modest level, and at the level of national health plans, the lesson is similar. Health professionals do not make the most important health-giving decisions. At the local level, networks of people caring for their own health within their home communities decide on crucial changes. At the national level, political movements and political factions of all kinds struggle to influence the shape of the polity and of the economy, and through them of health. In either case the professionals, the government works, and the “experts” make important but marginal contributions. They are most constructive if they recognize that their own role is secondary, and that they must try to identify and to serve that special sub-group of lay people who are already at work to improve health

7. The dichotomy of traditional and modern reinforces western ideology.
Libbert Crandon, PhD Anthropology, U. Connecticut, 1982
(Medical Anthropology Newsletter, Vol. 13, No. 4 p. 21-22) [Ha]
Some of these conceptual and continuity problems of the volume might have been obviated had the dichotomy between "traditional" and "modern" medical systems been abandoned. From an anthropological standpoint, this dichotomy is simplistic, and a conceptual product of the very hegemony that Elling criticizes. First, Banerji, in his excellent article on the history of Western medical traditions in India, specifically argues that there is no such thing as a single "modern Western" medical system. Second, both Elling and McDonald conclude their contributions with a reminder that in and of itself, any curative system plays only a very minor role in the general health of a population in comparison to political and economic forces. Yet, while the volume addresses the politics rather than the efficacy of medical systems, the reader is nagged throughout by the "whiff' of an assumption that the Western medical system is superior to all other systems (which, to one author at least, are basically all the same) and that Western medicine alone has the power to radically improve the health of the world's population. Hence, the real issue being covertly discussed can only be medical efficacy, as this is defined by professionals in the Western, developed world. This conclusion stems logically from the simplicity of the traditional/ modern dichotomy and from the inherent assumptions that it contains. The dichotomy itself winds up being an ideological trap, in spite of the author's protests.

8. Traditional healers harm patients psychologically—shock
Marlise Richter, Researcher: AIDS Law Project, 3
(Traditional Medicines and Traditional Healers in South Africa)
[The traditional healers in her study in Kwa-Zulu Natal] had not received the particular communicative skills that are important in counselling when dealing with patients that might be HIV-positive. It is usually considered redundant or maybe even culture imperialistic to provide healers with counselling skills because one anticipates that there is already a valid discourse inherent in the traditional healing system. What has to be realized, however, is the fact that a ritual of divination, in which all diagnosis takes place, is a highly dramatic event where everything is presented to the patient in a point-blank way. The shock effect is a crucial part of the ritual arrangement, and even though this might be a splendid way of doing things when it comes to revelations of ancestral wrath or witchcraft, it produces consequences when an AIDS-educated healer suddenly states a cogent description of this new disease and the lack of a cure. 12